Brazil on Film season announced for BFI Southbank

The BFI is announcing Brazil on Film, a major two-month season at BFI Southbank, which celebrates the richness, diversity and global impact of Brazilian cinema, in a survey of almost a century of filmmaking from 1931 to the present day. Arriving at a moment of renewed international attention, the programme brings together more than 40 titles from across Brazil, spanning landmark works, internationally acclaimed and award-winning films and rediscovered and recently restored gems across key movements and moments in Brazilian cinematic history. Presented as part of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025–26, a joint initiative between the British Council and Brazil’s Instituto Guimarães Rosa (IGR), the season runs from 1 May to 30 June, with screenings and events at BFI Southbank alongside a significant Brazil on Film online collection available UK-wide on BFI Player.

Season curators Renata de Almeida (Director of the São Paulo International Film Festival), and Adriana Rouanet (Film Producer and Curator, Founder of Colibri Cultural and Film Productions), said: 

“Our Brazil on Film programme traces a cinema defined by reinvention and resistance. This season explores landmark movements and internationally acclaimed filmmakers while also bringing forward lesser-known works and contemporary talent across Brazil’s diverse people and cultures, placing past and present in dialogue to reveal a national cinema in constant transformation, as well as looking ahead to the voices and perspectives that will shape Brazil’s cinematic future.”

Justin Johnson, BFI Head of Cinema Programme, said: 

“This season has been years in the making and feels especially timely now in the light of recent international awards success for Brazilian filmmaking. Presented as part of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025–26, it also reflects a wider moment of cultural exchange. Adriana and Renata had the impossible brief of curating a two-month season that covered the diverse breadth, creativity and global impact of Brazil’s rich cinematic history. They have delivered in abundance, and we are thrilled to present this extraordinary programme with filmmakers and experts joining us to provide deeper insight. BFI Southbank is going to feel like a Brazilian film festival every day.”

The two-month survey of Brazilian cinema’s modern foundations traces the evolution of Brazilian cinema through the social and political upheavals, that have helped shape Brazilian cinema. The season is a journey across moments of origin, rupture and renewal, a dialogue moving between early experimentation, dictatorship-era filmmaking, the rebirth of the Retomada in the 1990s and the emergence of vibrant new voices reshaping Brazilian cinema today. These include foundational works such as Mário Peixoto’s long unavailable but now restored 1931 silent film Limite, a landmark of early Brazilian cinema and a pioneering work of global avant-garde cinema restored in 2012 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, with restoration funding provided by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways and Qatar Museum Authority.

Other titles include José Carlos Burle’s We Are Also Brothers (1949) one of the earliest Brazilian feature films to confront racism directly, restored digitally in 2K by the Cinemateca Brasileira and by Cinecolor Brasil, and the revolutionary energy of Cinema Novo in Glauber Rocha’s incendiary landmark, Black God, White Devil (1964). Urban modernism is explored in Luiz Sérgio Person’s recently restored São Paulo Incorporated (1965), restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in association with Cinemateca Brasileira, Lauper Films Ltd. and the family of Luiz Sérgio Person with funding from the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

Alongside Nelson Pereira dos Santos’ Barren Lives (1963), the radical experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s extends to José Mojica Marins’ cult horror At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1964) and Ozualdo R. Candeias’ defining work of the Cinema Marginal movement The Margin (1967), alongside films such as Rogério Sganzerla’s The Woman of Everyone (1969) and Leon Hirszman’s Saint Bernard (1972). Carlos Diegues’ vibrant road movie Bye Bye Brazil (1979) reflects a country navigating cultural and social change, while Eduardo Coutinho’s groundbreaking documentary Man Marked for Death, Twenty Years Later (1984) further anchors the programme’s exploration of political history and memory. Bruno Barreto’s hugely popular Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976) offers a sensual and comic portrait of Brazilian life, which became one of the country’s most beloved films.

The Retomada of the 1990s, a period of cinematic rebirth, followed the closure of Embrafilme, the government agency that supported national cinema. The Retomada was sparked in part by the popular success of Carlota Joaquina, Princess of Brazil (1995), and marked the growing prominence of women filmmakers. This resurgence led to internationally recognised successes, including the Academy Award nominated City of God (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, 2002), Marcelo Gomes’ Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures (2005), and Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2006), exploring themes of displacement, memory, and nationhood. More recent acclaimed works include Anna Muylaert’s The Second Mother (2015), which incisively exposes class structures through domestic space, and Karim Aïnouz’s The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (2019), a lush and deeply felt portrait of female endurance and silenced histories.

Walter Salles and Kleber Mendonça Filho, who have drawn significant international attention for their latest films, are represented in the programme with earlier key works Foreign Land (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995) and Neighbouring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012). Alongside these established voices, the season showcases a generation of new and emerging Brazilian filmmakers, presenting contemporary titles including Mars One (Gabriel Martins, 2022), Manas (Marianna Brennand, 2024) and Dolores (Maria Clara Escobar and Marcelo Gomes, 2025), as well as The Day I Met You (André Novais Oliveira, 2023), White House (Luciano Vidigal, 2024), Same Old West (Enrico Rassi, 2024), The Nature of Invisible Things (Rafaela Camelo, 2025) and Cyclone (Flávia Castro, 2025), reflecting the vitality and diversity of contemporary Brazilian filmmaking.

The programme also foregrounds Indigenous and Amazonian perspectives through a strand that centres the Amazonian experience across five decades, presenting a selection of films in which Indigenous voices and ancestral knowledge redefine Brazilian territory. Titles include Iracema: Uma Transa Amazônica (Jorge Bodanzky and Orlando Senna, 1975), a landmark hybrid of documentary and fiction exposing the human cost of development, Alien Nights (Sérgio de Carvalho, 2022), My Foreign Land (Lakapoy Collective, Louise Botkay, João Moreira Salles, 2025) and The Father and the Shaman (Lawaretê Kaiabi, Felipe Tomazelli, Luís Villaça, 2025), which explore identity, displacement, spirituality and resistance in contemporary Brazil.

A special focus is given to the work of the late Héctor Babenco, who would have celebrated his 80th this year. Argentine by birth and Brazilian by choice, Babenco redefined Latin American cinema through a powerful blend of realism and lyricism, bringing international attention to marginalised lives. The programme includes Kiss of the Spider Woman (1984), which earned him an Academy Award® nomination for Best Director, his powerful critique of police corruption during the military dictatorship Lúcio Flávio (1977), and his recently restored international breakthrough, Pixote (1980), a hard-hitting portrait of street life, restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in collaboration with JLS Facilitações Sonoras and Cinemateca Brasileira with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Héctor Babenco died in 2016, Babenco: Tell Me When I Die (2019), reflects on the filmmaker’s life and legacy in an intimate, deeply moving documentary directed by Babenco’s companion, actress and director Bárbara Paz.

Events throughout the season include An Introduction to Brazil on Film on 12 May, where season curators Renata de Almeida and Adriana Rouanet will be joined by guests to present a richly illustrated overview of the programme, spotlighting key titles and hidden gems while discussing the most influential movements and filmmakers of Brazilian cinema and reflecting on the industry today. The event will be followed by a screening of Foreign Land (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995) and a Q&A with co-director Daniela Thomas, with further events to be announced.

Family screenings across the season include a selection of animated and live-action films, from Ale Abreu’s Oscar-nominated animation Boy and the World (2013) to Fernando Fraiha’s Chuck Billy and the Magnificent Guava Tree (2024), alongside Pilar’s Diary in the Amazon (Eduardo Vaisman and Rodrigo Van Der Put, 2025) and the animated feature Arca de Noé (Sérgio Machado and Alois Di Leon, 2024).

The season will also be accompanied by a significant curated online collection on BFI Player, offering audiences across the UK the opportunity to explore a rich selection of Brazilian Cinema at home. Titles include Medusa (Anita Rocha da Silveira, 2021), Hard Paint (Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher, 2018), Macunaíma (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1969), Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha, 1964) and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (José Mojica Marins, 1967), with further titles to be announced.

Brazil on Film runs at BFI Southbank from 1 May to 30 June. Tickets for screenings and events in May go on sale to BFI Patrons on 7 April, BFI Members on 8 April, and to the general public on 10 April.